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Farewell to hand waving

SOME research tools change the face of science. Take the Super Proton Synchrotron at Europe’s CERN particle physics centre. In 1983, it detected the W and Z particles, confirming that two of the fundamental forces of nature were actually one. Ten years later, NASA’s Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) found ripples in the radiation left by the big bang, revealing the seeds of structure in our Universe. Now comes the Microwave Anisotropy Probe (MAP), COBE’s heir, with findings that change cosmology even more profoundly.

Criticism has been heaped on cosmology for being better endowed with untestable ideas than measurable facts – …